PlayStation 3 vs Xbox 360

• Introduction
• Under the Hood: PlayStation 3
• Under the Hood: Xbox 360
• The Software Line-Up
• Seeing in High-Definition
• The Movie Format War
• Conclusion

Introduction

It's been a little over a year since Sony first announced its upcoming PlayStation 3 console. In that time, plenty of hype (not to mention barbs) have flown between the Microsoft and Sony camps, each attempting to tout their machine as the "better" offering. After all, who can forget when Sony's Phil Harrison took the stage at the European Game Developer's Conference in the fall of 2005 and talked critically about Microsoft's plan to release two retail versions of the Xbox 360?

PlayStation 3 Xbox 360

"Are there two versions of the Xbox 360 that people want to buy? I don't know," said Harrison. "I look at those formats. I think it just confuses the audience. They don't know which one to buy, developers don't know which one to create for, and retailers don't know which one to stock...So I think we wouldn't take that strategy. We wouldn't create confusion."

Since the propaganda has been constant on both sides of the fence (strangely, the only thing Microsoft and Sony can seem to agree on is that the Nintendo Wii looks incredibly cool), we decided to sift through all of the available information in order to figure out exactly what both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have to offer, and how they compare.